Future in Mauritius

Hi,

I started Christian meditation in order to cope with the mentality

My advise:
Stay away from the state schools, local accommodation and try to maintain your life in the little expat bubble - with always more service personnel than absolutely necessary. Try to outsource bureaucracy trips, there are helping hands out there as well.

And come to terms with the fact that you pay way more for living costs than in Europe except for cleaning services and babysitting....
In Europe goods are standardised and cheap, in Mauritius, they are shipped, indirect taxed and inefficient - so much more expensive.

Life by the beach is great but as everything in life, has a cost to it. Mauritius is a developing country.
In Mauritius, this price tag is high, not only in monetary terms but also in terms of convenience and imperfections. Embrace it and be always happy, as the locals say ...

"I'm wondering how you all are coping with the locals ".............wow that's some comment from a Guest of the Country.

I find most of the problems are dealing with foreigners, I am one also, who have an over inflated opinion of themselves.  I have lived in many countries around the world and the same problems you mention exist in all of them.
The way "some" foreign guests of this country treat the local population is sometimes depressing to witness, some of the attitudes displayed belong in a time I hoped had long since passed and their response to this can sometimes be heartwarming. I love their mentality.

As a previous poster says " Embrace it and be always happy,"     and if at sometime I decide Island Life is not for me I can always leave.

If someone can point me in the direction of the perfect Utopia please do.

TodBenjamin wrote:

Hello, I've relocated to Mauritius and been working here for about 3 years now. It is indeed a beautiful place, but I've been struggling when it comes to the people's mentality and behaviour. I'm wondering how you all are coping with the locals such as, the rude drivers, people butting in line, lack of customer service, gossip, lack of work etiquette and reliable workers, country governance,theft etc.? I've also recently noticed some alarming videos of the violence in schools and towards the authorities on social media. Your thoughts/advice would be much appreciated.

One of the main essences of expatriation is actually 'coping with the locals'. Mauritius will not change for you, you will have to adapt to the realities of living here.
Thousands of expats have been living here and have immersed themselves in the realities and culture of the island and its inhabitants.
It did not work out for some and at that point, a decision has to be made. Keep trying or pack up for a more suitable destination. Not two people live and experience a situation the same way.

Many of the woes you mentioned - school fights, rude drivers, gossip, etc -  exist, more or less,  in almost all other countries. Up to you to weight in the positives aspects of living here compared to the negatives. If the negatives out-weight the positives, then maybe Mauritius is not for you after all.

Thank you for all the valuable feedback from you all.

@whitedsharkbait I've heard locals themselves use that phrase here as if to generalise the majority of the population and humorise their actions e.g. Someone parks infront of your gate, neighbours throwing their trash in your bin,worker not showing up to complete their task after getting paid, making comments and staring at a lady on the beach, rearranging a restaurant menu so as to ask to bring down original price,stealing bottles of alcohol at wedding...I'm not short of anecdotes on this island. I've quickly come to understand why companies are bringing in workers from Bangladesh. I've travelled to many countries in my lifetime, perhaps it's time to pack my bags and leave this "paradise".

Yes, Mauritius can be full of surprises. Good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, expected or unexpected.

Nevertheless, you got the point. If one expat project does not work out in a country, another one probably will, in another location.
That's the whole spirit regarding expatriation that we advocate here.

Hi all,
I am a local and both views are thought provoking. I've been trying to cope with both for 40 years+. The "Paradise" has been invented by foreigners who dream to fly from "Hell" they've contributed more or less to build. As WinstonH has it, many if not all the habits from hell have been maintained vis-a-vis locals and have been brooding this rude attitude. Our policies have given into it and the chaos is now institutionalised. Sometimes I feel foreigners have installed hell all over now and our kids wake up in the morning in front of TV on Our Planet witnessing what our generation is leaving them with (this morning at breakfast my 8 year old boy managed to smuggle into the TV and came back with a new ecological catastrophe, he just learned about the penguins...)The good attitude lies not in separating them in public and private schools : my generation was still one where white and black (today read rich and poor, because rich blacks have joined the game and claim for their share of the corpse) shared same school benches (even though I never believed in education systems as they are from day 1) to learn to share values. Unfortunately, it looks like common people learned faster to raise hell than more clever ones and quickly learned the rules to perpetrate barbarism. I rarely respond in forums but the title was appealing because I thought I would find ideas from "Hellraisers" who realised their folly and came here to build Utopia because, as human, we belong to the race of our forefathers who, always resstless, would look for the settlement of the sacred on earth. Name it Paradise or Utopia, for me, within us it lies in the form of will to transform. So I wouldn't same adapt or leave but transform or die useless. Rene Char wrote "Celui qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne merite ni égard ni patience" (one who comes to the world without disturbing is not worth of politeness nor patience)

Le Petit Fermier

Expats who can understand can join us to transform Mauritius into something more than a paradise for tax evaders. Call for interest.

I am interested. Please message me some details.

Merci

Mixture of shock and disappointment reading this post.

I'm from Mauritius and love my country. Acknowledged or not, we are all foreigners through our quite recent ancestry, from Europe, Asia, Africa, and somehow found a common identity under a single Flag. We could name a number of previously colonised states across the globe which still struggle severely with issues of ethnicity. In spite of relicts from an archaic system, Mauritians in foreign land, would very likely recognise each other. At home, we are still a new society, and still finding grounds - this is how I reason it all. Give us time.

In my view, foreigners today are very much welcomed here. Our tourism sector contributes roughly a quarter of our domestic output, the number of tourist arrivals almost equals our population, we revise legislation to incite Foreign Direct Investments, employ foreign expertise and labour, and for Freak's sake, we even have a Privy Council in place to solve our homeland issues.

Most foreigners expatriated to Mauritius, who I have met, are genuinely interested in participating in Mauritian life, culturally, skill-wise and economically. I find interacting with foreigners interesting, mind-opening, and culturally beneficial - and I'm convinced it's both ways, i.e. for foreigners interacting with Mauritians.

True - societal norms have deteriorated over the years. We would do well to study the phenomenon. The Mauritius spoken about by my elders, back in the 70s post-independence, is seemingly not the same as the present in terms of civic sense and law & order. We recovered from a brief civil unrest (racial war) pre-independence remarkably well.

Before the 1990s, we were not considered economically prosperous (relatively to the rest of Africa, as a benchmark). We even had a severe recession in the early 80s. But it seems we had safety, civic sense, respect. Post 'economic miracle', it seems societal behaviour has gradually changed. I do question in a general sense whether economic prosperity cannibalises societal prosperity. Not sure.

We could theorise though: drugs, disparity between rich and poor, corruption, poor leadership, greed, unsustainable monetary/debt systems, if these are not all interrelated, and if not global phenomena (even if for me these issues are very real).

Other than theory though, we do have our share of palpable issues such as the ones you mentioned. The solution - for me - is passive activism. Mentality cannot unfortunately be changed overnight. However, through our acts, our initiatives, resistance instead of perpetual reaction, education, voting responsibly, and demanding more accountability from our leaders, I do tend to think that the Mauritian society will eventually ease out into respectful co-existence, and further refine its identity. There are many people out there doing a great job in that respect.

Give us time. This country is worth waiting and fighting for.

A

Too bad this post is not in French and that my english is not good enough to allow me to express what I would really love to.

What if we ask the question the other way round? Have we ever wondered how the locals are coping with us? How can we expect 1.2 million people to change for us? Why can't we adjust to them? We all delocated for some reason or another, some for fiscal reasons, some others out of frustration with our own system and we choose Mauritius because of what it benefits to us. Why do we want to have all good and nothing bad ? Why do we have to keep ourselves in our own little expat bubble and ignore the locals? We are superior to no one. Does it mean that when we choose to relocate, we suddenly realise that in the countries we came from, there are not a single rude drivers, absolutely no people butting in line, theft free and violence free to be shocked and outraged with the "violence" here that is not even a third of what there is in our respective countries?